Hi! My name is Tara O'Brien and I am the owner of Connect, Relate, Create LLC. 

First a little bit about me personally. I'm in my low 40's. I have 2 young school-age children and an awesome husband. With my family and my husband's combined, I have a big family with 7 sisters and 5 brothers. I also have my wonderful parents and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. 

I have 2 cats. One of which has cancer in his lungs and around his nasal area (he had an infection when he had his CT so it was hard to distinguish what was the infection and what was cancer. We are just giving him steroids and lots of love and affection until he's uncomfortable and it's time to let go. 

I currently live in Western New York though I have lived in a couple places in mid-lower New Jersey (within about a 30 min drive of Philadelphia) and Seattle, Washington. I'm active in my kids' school district community. Currently in my 6th consecutive year on an elementary PTO and 4th as Co-President. I'm on the district wellness committee. I'm a substitute teacher for the district. And I do whatever I can to support my older son's parent-teacher organization. I tutored for many years in lieu of teaching because I loved having my own business and the 1:1 and small group dynamics. Generally I tutored English or Math from grades 5 through 12 though I dabbled a bit in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Spanish, History, and did a lot of SAT prep. I did not tutor past Calculus though. I did start to get back into teaching 2 years ago and taught UPK for the district my kids reside in. I was going to substitute last year but that's when I got my initial cancer diagnosis and that got derailed before it got started.

In 2012, when I created Connect, Relate, Create LLC, I was intending to use it as a tool for my budding tutoring business as well as to use it as a site to share educational resources. Well, time, kids and other priorities all happened and it got set aside.

I had no idea that 10 years later, when I referred to CRC (as I had abbreviated my business title) would take on a whole new meaning to me when I was diagnosed with Rectal Cancer which fell under the umbrella of Colorectal Cancer. 

1 year post initial diagnosis and 1 week after finding out that my cancer had metastasized, I wanted to start a blog to share with friends and family that wanted updates. Then I remembered how hard it was to find out other people's experiences with cancer and treatments and the over-sharer that I am decided that my blog should be public and available to others going through cancer treatment and that I should share the good, the bad, and the ugly of the physical as well as the emotional impact for others who may be going through the same thing or for family members of those fighting cancer to know how best to support their loved ones. 

Then it snowballed in true ADHD form and I decided to re-brand my site to allow people with a similar (or any) cancer diagnosis the opportunity to come together as a community and a place to share the things I've learned about Colorectal Cancer and to link to relevant research and studies because the pamphlets were never enough for me. I needed real data and research. Knowledge is comforting to me. I'm still at the blog stage, but I'll get here.

So, whether you are a current cancer patient, a survivor, a loved one of a cancer patient or survivor or of someone who didn't make it past their diagnosis, I hope you find something on this page that helps you.